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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Is Final Fantasy On The Verge Of Collapse?

 

Is Final Fantasy On The Verge Of Collapse?

Yes 135 56.49%
 
No 104 43.51%
 
Total:239
Jumpin on 07 January 2011

Well, in terms of content, FF8 and 9 seemed to have the most, with FF7 being a close third. While FF10, 12, and 13 were much bigger worlds, they felt increasingly empty. FF13 is probably the biggest game, but it also was a very empty world with mostly just space to walk around and monsters to fight, go back to FF8 and you have interactive and evolving communities throughout the world as the game progresses.



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Christian973 on 07 January 2011
twesterm said:

Yes and no.

FF I-VII were all pretty revolutionary each for their own reasons, and then popularity started going to SE's head or something.

With the release of XIII and XIV it's pretty blatantly obvious SE doesn't give two shits about its customers.  FFXIII was just garbage and Yahtzee (even though I don't put a lot of faith in him) said it pretty well: SE just wants to make movies.

With FFXIV, ugh, that was just one of the worst cash grabs I've ever seen and I can't wait for that game to completely fail in six months.  There are bad games and then there are just plain offensive games like that.

That's why I say they're on the verge of collapse.  The Final Fantasy series is a joke.  Other than looking pretty and decent music, they have nothing going for them.  I'm sorry, but if you want me to spend more than 60 hours on a game it better be fun, it better have interesting characters, and it better have a good story.  FFXIII had none of those things.

So that's the yes.  I say no also because for some reason people keep buying the games.  I admit I bought FFXIII (used) and FFXIV (because FFXI) but there's almost no chance of me buying FFXV whatever it is.

Full of win! Excellent Post.



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hikaruchan on 07 January 2011
A203D said:
2000cc said:

Kazuki's, you make the point I would have exactly. Anyone who has lived in Japan or knows a lot of people knows the country would probably collapse before FF,  Some people over there would rather play FF than eat when starving.

I'm confident the Japanese could sustain FF alone, I'm not saying other regions arent important or their sales dont help, its just that FF has an almost religious appeal over there that doesn't apply in the western world. Their passion for this franchise is in fact one of the major reasons I actually started thinking gaming was actualy worth continuing with.

From those I know there FFXIII is held in extremely high regard, Mainly because of its similarty in gameplay style to FFX, which is held in the same regard over there it seems as VII is here (mass opinion says it is the "best" one).

And if 6 million sales is "on the verge of collapse",then the gaming industry is in dire straits. FFXIII outsold over 80% of the industry this generation. If that is a bad day for Square Enix as a company then their bad days are very very good.

FF13 has been the worst selling FF in Japan since FF5. and i'm sure if amazon.jp user reviews are anything to go by, a lot of Japanese fans hate it.

You have never stated that you speak Japanese.

By The Way I have a number of Japanese Friends who love FFXIII.



Japanese Pop Culture Otaku

Mad55 on 07 January 2011
Jumpin said:

Well, in terms of content, FF8 and 9 seemed to have the most, with FF7 being a close third. While FF10, 12, and 13 were much bigger worlds, they felt increasingly empty. FF13 is probably the biggest game, but it also was a very empty world with mostly just space to walk around and monsters to fight, go back to FF8 and you have interactive and evolving communities throughout the world as the game progresses.


are you serious? To me ff8's world was so empty it had a bland feel to it sometimes.



Alphachris on 07 January 2011
twesterm said:

That's why I say they're on the verge of collapse.  The Final Fantasy series is a joke.  Other than looking pretty and decent music, they have nothing going for them.  I'm sorry, but if you want me to spend more than 60 hours on a game it better be fun, it better have interesting characters, and it better have a good story.  FFXIII had none of those things.

So that's the yes.  I say no also because for some reason people keep buying the games.  I admit I bought FFXIII (used) and FFXIV (because FFXI) but there's almost no chance of me buying FFXV whatever it is.


It is funny. For me FF XIII was my best gaming experience this generation so far. I had very much fun, it had very interesting characters and it had a real deep story in my opinion. To be honest, it is one of only a few games that actually have characters with their own morals and a story to speak about nowadays.

Look at this quote from wikipedia:

"Final Fantasy XIII was rated at 39/40 from the Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu, with three reviewers giving the maximum 10/10 and one reviewer giving 9/10.[96] Dengeki praised the game for the battle system, stating that the battles are by far the most exciting in the series, and concluded Final Fantasy XIII deserved a score of 120, and that 100 would not be enough.[103] The game was voted as the second best game of 2009 in Dengeki Online's reader poll,[104] and in January 2010, was voted the best game ever in Famitsu's reader poll.[105]"

So it got very good critics as well and is regarded a very good game in Japan. It good good reviews here in europe too, but there very pretty harsh critics, too. But just seeing this bad critics and proclaim the downfall of the whole series while it got so many praise at the same time is pretty one-sided.

FF is still the most important JRPG franchise in my opinion. Square-Enix is putting very much work in their games and they take their time for each entry. There is no risk of getting yearly sequels that start to feel like the same game over and over again. Every FF plays different than the last one. With FF X the storylines started to get more serious and mature (mature in the sense of dealing with morally challenging themes and not just brutality and violence) and I really like that development.

There are franchises like Monster Hunter or Pokemon, that sell higher numbers on handhelds, but I do not regard them as better JRPGS. Pokemon is more like a subgenre for me, because there is no worthwhile focus on an overall storyline or characters. Just gameplay and a lot of monstern to catch and train. Monster Hunter also lacks the overall focus on characters and story and it is more like an action game. I do not think that these games are true substitutes for the experience that FF delivers.

FF always delivered on story and character develepment. It is not just the fact of having a story and character backstories... it is also about characters having their own morals and  you can see how the individual characters are struggling. You can reflect the characters with your own morals and the game is gaining far more depth than most of the western games. FF X had the strong themes of religion vs. technical progress, blind faith vs. critical thinking, selfsacrifice in favor of many others, etc. Those scenes with Yuna felt so intense because you could understand her point of view. The whole game tried to make you feel the world so that when the major plot twists arises you can see it through the eyes of the various characters.

Also the WRPGs I have played so far totally failed to deliver. Oblivion was absolutely the worst RPG that I have played so far. I stayed away from it in the beginning but after it got so much praise I bought the "game of the year edition" and decided to give it a try. That game was not fun (in fact I was bored the whole 30 hours that I had put into it), it had bland characters (and no "main character" at all) and the main story was totally boring too. It felt more like an Action-Adventure with rpg-elements.

Borderlands was also a well recieved shooter/Rpg-Hybrid. It suffered from the same problems and was boring as well. The story was so bad and the characters were simply there with no actual development. It was almost a pure Egoshooter with some rpg-elements. The second "game of the year edition" game that I fell for.

I bought Dragon Age alongside with Oblivion in December 09 and still couldn't convince me to try it. Maybe I will try it after I finally finish White Knight Chronicles. I can't make a statement about it now, but I am somehow expecting it to be mediocre, too. But maybe this one can some fun, anyway. I have not written it off totally.

Mass Effect 2 is coming and I do not know what to do with it. It got great praise, but it looks more  like a shooter with RPG-elements. I have read some reviews and the actual main quest should be rather weak and last like 5-6 hours. The focus lies on recruiting and doing the characters sidequests....I am tempted to buy it, but I already got heavily dissappointed by heavily praised western-RPG games twice before and I just don't like shooters that much.

I just wanted to point out that WRPGs are not really a substitute to actual story- and characterdriven JRPGS.  As much as I dislike WRPG I have to admit that they are made to suit a different gaming taste. So they are not bad per se, I just don't like them. But the US/UK also have to admit that in its core FF 13 was a great game and it got much praise around the world and it had a strong impact with many core JRPG-Fans.

But in the end those discussions are totally useless. There simply are people who hate on anything that some people can deeply appreciate.

 



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Scoobes on 07 January 2011
hikaruchan said:
Scoobes said:
Crystalchild said:
 

 Game journalism is broken, and broke Final Fantasy, which will probably become a niche market like many others JRPGs.

 

Just wrong.

i think the thing that has pissed of (myself included) most of the haters, was that so many things were left out.

the world was never so streamlined (e.g limited), you cannot access any house (as if there were many anyway.. ) there was almost nothing to do aside from the mainstory, no deep hidden secrets that had nothing to do with the Fal'cie thing..

and as Square told us so often already ~ a game like FF7 couldnt be remaked without MUCH effort. (much much more than FFXIII has taken.) Why? because of the technical prsentation. it consumes so much time and money .. that the Games overall size suffers from it.

to me, FFXIII had the same monotone feeling as a FPS. 'luckilly' the presentation was great and has maked up for it.

 

it isnt square's fault, its simply that games get more and more complex.

If you read some of the dev interviews they paint a horrible picture of the development for FFXIII. The sheer volume of artwork in the game is astounding and this is because the art team spent years making art assets to the point where large amounts were left out of the final game.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/30640/Exclusive_Behind_The_Scenes_of__Square_Enixs_Final_Fantasy_XIII.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed: GamasutraNews (Gamasutra News)

This article also suggests that the developers didn't have any clear focus of what was going to be in the final game, even at late stages of development. Who knows what different features the teams were toying around with? Even after the trailer (which was a proof of concept) the team didn't have a clear focus of what direction to take the game:

"However, it became clear that, at the time, there were actually very few members who saw the trailer as a representation of what we wanted to achieve with Final Fantasy XIII. This lack of a shared vision became the root of many conflicts that arose later in development."

It was actually only after the demo was released that the team gained an insight into how the final game would be:

"Even at a late stage of development, we did not agree on key elements of the game, which stemmed from the lack of a cohesive vision, the lack of finalized specs, and the remaining problems with communication between departments.

What enabled us to conquer this line of seemingly endless conflicts was the development process for the Final Fantasy XIII demo, which was included in the Japan-only Blu-ray version of the animated film Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete. The demo was not in our original plan, so we had to make adjustments to the overall schedule to accommodate it. Whatever effects creating the demo had on the schedule, once it was complete we realized it was just the panacea we needed."

The article also talks about how trying to develop a universal engine to use accross multiple platforms and multiple games negatively impacted on development and how international player tests came too late for many criticisms of the game to be addressed. All these factors point to a highly inefficient development process for the game and poor leadership/decision making.

I don't think that making a game with the depth of previous Final Fantasy games is impossible, but it is if your development procedure is as inefficient as the development of FFXIII was. I hope the lessons learnt from FFXIII development translate to efficient development of future titles leading to more depth.

FFXII also had a lot of similar development problems with a lot internal pliitics and Mastsuno san getting sick compounded  the problems  

Yeah, I read it had problems too, particularly when it came to the addition of two characters (can you guess which ones? :P). Unlike XIII though, I get the feeling it had some vision and directive early on but lost its way (and perhaps leadership) after Mastsuno became ill. It felt like some aspects of the game weren't that well fleshed out. That's just based on what I've read and observed on my playthrough though.

The stuff I posted before on XIII was directly from one of the devs.




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A203D on 07 January 2011
hikaruchan said:
A203D said:

FF13 has been the worst selling FF in Japan since FF5. and i'm sure if amazon.jp user reviews are anything to go by, a lot of Japanese fans hate it.

You have never stated that you speak Japanese.

By The Way I have a number of Japanese Friends who love FFXIII.

Hahaha, lol, no i dont. but based on reviews out of 5 stars, theres over 400 2 stars and below on amazon.jp, with an average rating of about 3 stars, this is out of about 3000 people i think. although it dosent represent all 1.8 million people who bought it, based on the general critical reception i'm guessing not many JP fans are happy. Wada has even acknowledged that some are not very happy with it.



Aiddon on 07 January 2011

Another problem with XIII was its absolutely TERRIBLE story-telling. Instead of bothering to actually weave exposition into the narrative, Toriyama and the other writers instead opted to shove it into a datalog that you had to read separate from the story. That is one of the WORST things you can do in a story and comes off as both lazy and unprofessional.



Mad55 on 07 January 2011
Alphachris said:
twesterm said:

That's why I say they're on the verge of collapse.  The Final Fantasy series is a joke.  Other than looking pretty and decent music, they have nothing going for them.  I'm sorry, but if you want me to spend more than 60 hours on a game it better be fun, it better have interesting characters, and it better have a good story.  FFXIII had none of those things.

So that's the yes.  I say no also because for some reason people keep buying the games.  I admit I bought FFXIII (used) and FFXIV (because FFXI) but there's almost no chance of me buying FFXV whatever it is.


It is funny. For me FF XIII was my best gaming experience this generation so far. I had very much fun, it had very interesting characters and it had a real deep story in my opinion. To be honest, it is one of only a few games that actually have characters with their own morals and a story to speak about nowadays.

Look at this quote from wikipedia:

"Final Fantasy XIII was rated at 39/40 from the Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu, with three reviewers giving the maximum 10/10 and one reviewer giving 9/10.[96] Dengeki praised the game for the battle system, stating that the battles are by far the most exciting in the series, and concluded Final Fantasy XIII deserved a score of 120, and that 100 would not be enough.[103] The game was voted as the second best game of 2009 in Dengeki Online's reader poll,[104] and in January 2010, was voted the best game ever in Famitsu's reader poll.[105]"

So it got very good critics as well and is regarded a very good game in Japan. It good good reviews here in europe too, but there very pretty harsh critics, too. But just seeing this bad critics and proclaim the downfall of the whole series while it got so many praise at the same time is pretty one-sided.

FF is still the most important JRPG franchise in my opinion. Square-Enix is putting very much work in their games and they take their time for each entry. There is no risk of getting yearly sequels that start to feel like the same game over and over again. Every FF plays different than the last one. With FF X the storylines started to get more serious and mature (mature in the sense of dealing with morally challenging themes and not just brutality and violence) and I really like that development.

There are franchises like Monster Hunter or Pokemon, that sell higher numbers on handhelds, but I do not regard them as better JRPGS. Pokemon is more like a subgenre for me, because there is no worthwhile focus on an overall storyline or characters. Just gameplay and a lot of monstern to catch and train. Monster Hunter also lacks the overall focus on characters and story and it is more like an action game. I do not think that these games are true substitutes for the experience that FF delivers.

FF always delivered on story and character develepment. It is not just the fact of having a story and character backstories... it is also about characters having their own morals and  you can see how the individual characters are struggling. You can reflect the characters with your own morals and the game is gaining far more depth than most of the western games. FF X had the strong themes of religion vs. technical progress, blind faith vs. critical thinking, selfsacrifice in favor of many others, etc. Those scenes with Yuna felt so intense because you could understand her point of view. The whole game tried to make you feel the world so that when the major plot twists arises you can see it through the eyes of the various characters.

Also the WRPGs I have played so far totally failed to deliver. Oblivion was absolutely the worst RPG that I have played so far. I stayed away from it in the beginning but after it got so much praise I bought the "game of the year edition" and decided to give it a try. That game was not fun (in fact I was bored the whole 30 hours that I had put into it), it had bland characters (and no "main character" at all) and the main story was totally boring too. It felt more like an Action-Adventure with rpg-elements.

Borderlands was also a well recieved shooter/Rpg-Hybrid. It suffered from the same problems and was boring as well. The story was so bad and the characters were simply there with no actual development. It was almost a pure Egoshooter with some rpg-elements. The second "game of the year edition" game that I fell for.

I bought Dragon Age alongside with Oblivion in December 09 and still couldn't convince me to try it. Maybe I will try it after I finally finish White Knight Chronicles. I can't make a statement about it now, but I am somehow expecting it to be mediocre, too. But maybe this one can some fun, anyway. I have not written it off totally.

Mass Effect 2 is coming and I do not know what to do with it. It got great praise, but it looks more  like a shooter with RPG-elements. I have read some reviews and the actual main quest should be rather weak and last like 5-6 hours. The focus lies on recruiting and doing the characters sidequests....I am tempted to buy it, but I already got heavily dissappointed by heavily praised western-RPG games twice before and I just don't like shooters that much.

I just wanted to point out that WRPGs are not really a substitute to actual story- and characterdriven JRPGS.  As much as I dislike WRPG I have to admit that they are made to suit a different gaming taste. So they are not bad per se, I just don't like them. But the US/UK also have to admit that in its core FF 13 was a great game and it got much praise around the world and it had a strong impact with many core JRPG-Fans.

But in the end those discussions are totally useless. There simply are people who hate on anything that some people can deeply appreciate.

 

yea it seemed like twesterm was giving his opinion. but he made it sound factual for some reason lol.



LivingMetal on 07 January 2011

Final what...?